On Ruthless Editing

My current work in progress has a cut file that is close to 60 pages long. When I first started it, it was painful to “kill those darlings,” removing words and paragraphs and pages that had taken me days and weeks and months to write in the first place. It felt better to know I was just putting them someplace else, not deleting them entirely, in case I wanted to reuse them, later (so far that hasn’t happened). Less of a cut, and more of a “let’s just move you over there.”

The act of writing, as anyone who has done it in any form knows, is rewriting. It’s editing. Ruthlessly. Without emotional entanglements. The lucky ones, I think, are those for whom that’s their favorite part of the process. For me, it just feels like so much work, whereas the initial crafting part is the fun part. It’s probably why I’m more of a pantser (one who writes from the seat of her pants) than a plotter (one who outlines, then writes). The reason I love to write is because I love to create. I love to see where ideas go on the page. I love to fall in love with my story. I have yet to fall in love with editing.

I’ve never enjoyed discovering that my product – creative or otherwise – is less than perfect on the first outing. (It’s worth noting that I’ve rewritten this one blog post at least four times). But it’s a critical and necessary process. If I’m so lucky as to be picked up by an agent, and then a publisher, there will be much more editing and revision to come. So, I might as well get used to it.

As with many things, there’s much to be learned from the editing process that extends beyond writing, itself. So, should it be helpful to you, whether you, too, are writing a novel or finishing a report for work or trying to reach some personal goal you’ve set, here are some strategies I have learned that have worked for me.

• Start with the big picture. When starting the editing process, I always do a full read from beginning to end. Along the way I catch typos and poor phrasing, but the main goal is to take stock of the entire piece. Is there a coherent beginning, middle, and end? Is there rising tension, conflict, and a resolution that makes (narrative) sense? While external reviewers and others’ feedback is always useful, first and foremost you need to be able to edit yourself. You need to know whether the big picture is working, or not. You need to be able to see the big picture, not just the words on the page.

• Change your viewpoint. I always draft by hand and then type the pages up as I go. That process doesn’t work for everyone, but for me, it’s how I create. It also allows me to do a first edit as I go. But during the multiple rounds of edits to come, I have to find ways to change my viewpoint. This may mean printing it out and editing by hand. I once heard the author Emily St. John Mandel describe how she picks pages at random throughout the manuscript and just edits that page. I’ve heard of authors starting with the last page and editing backwards. Read it out loud. Record yourself reading it. You have to find ways to change the way you see what’s in front of you, so that you can see it with fresh eyes.

• Break big projects into smaller parts. My current work in progress is a dual-POV, dual-timeline novel. This allows me to do things like edit just one character’s pages, and then another’s. I edit all of one timeline, and then the other. I go through and edit dialog only. I do searches for words I overuse, like “just,” “slightly,” “nodded,” and “shrugged” (and so many more). Breaking the project into smaller pieces is another way of changing your view.

• Be willing to kill your darlings. In addition to cutting words, sometimes you have to cut whole pages or even chapters. As I noted at the top, I have a 60-page cut file from this one novel. And that’s not because I had a 400-page novel I needed to cut down to 300. It came in paragraphs and pages, along the way. I decided that a third-POV character was trying to do too much for the project. It was hard, because it’s a character I love. But their POV wasn’t serving the ultimate goal of the story, and I had to be willing to cut it – to kill my darling – for the story to be told well.

• Invite in other voices. Last year I had the pleasure of hearing Jason Mott speak at the North Carolina Writer’s Network fall conference. In his remarks he described his “fifteen draft” revising process. I remember thinking, who the heck is going to do that? And here I am, on draft “at least twenty,” still catching things, still tightening, still revising, thanks to the incredible gift of feedback from multiple early readers. I loathe giving less-than-perfect drafts to other people to read. And, I’ve had to accept that I will only get better if I let other people in.

• Take a break. Finally, there is great value in walking away from that thing you’re working on and coming back to it with fresh eyes. Go start something new. Spend a few weeks doing something else. No matter what you’re working on, whether it’s writing, or something else, giving yourself some distance will always make it better. At the very least, it should remind you why you started in the first place: hopefully to do something less like work and more like fun.